A Million Thoughts: Learn All About Meditation from a Himalayan Mystic

There was a time I meditated in a slightly warmer place and there I was plagued by snakes and wild lizards. Once I chose the plains and it was hot, infested with scorpions. There was no respite from these wild creatures wherever I chose to meditate but I would like to add that the forces of nature, the lineage of gurus really take care of a true seeker.

Throughout my meditation, not one wild animal – a snake, scorpion, rat, giant spiders or a lizard – ever harmed me. Not even once. This is ultimately what meditation is about – experiencing and living in divine union. For, if you truly see God in all creatures what’s there to worry then? And if you don’t, what’s there to see then? My suggestion is to carefully choose a place that offers you quietude and is inhabitable.

Emotional Hurdles

It is normal to experience intense feelings while meditating. They can range from hysterical joy or laughter to acute resentment and everything in between. From the perspective of meditation, all emotions act as hurdles. It’s like a sprinter must not celebrate before he crosses the finish line. Any emotion, no matter how joyous or sorrowful, will distract the athlete. Such is the case with meditation too.

Both negative and positive emotions distract and make a meditator restless. The type you are holding a session on (whether concentrative, contemplative, mindful, observant or any other type) is immaterial. Anything that deviates you from your focus is a hurdle. If you do your meditation correctly, you become a reservoir of positive emotions naturally. During the meditation, however, it is important for a meditator to stay perfectly even. To that effect, there are eight worldly emotions, categorized into positive and negative, that are detrimental to good meditation.

The Four Positive Emotions

When a positive emotion is triggered, you feel happy, good, important, motivated and strong. You feel like you can take on the whole world. You are the same you, but something within you changes when you experience a positive emotion. There are four types of positive emotions:

Pleasure

All sense gratification, everything you do and experience through your body for joy, falls under this category.

Praise

If you or your work gets recognition or appreciation, you naturally feel good.

Gain

This is when you believe you have made a gain, material or otherwise. It could range from winning a lottery ticket to killing a mosquito; one may boost your bank account, and, the other may satisfy your ego.

Delightful Words

Someone offers you a compliment, it spontaneously triggers a positive emotion, especially if you feel it was a genuine compliment.

The Four Negative Emotions

The four negative ones are the exact opposite of above. They make you feel low, pensive, crippled and weak. They are triggered when you feel perturbed by displeasure, criticism, loss, and dreadful words.

Overcoming Emotional Hurdles During Meditation

Emotions are a group of lingering thoughts. Just like a beehive hosts many bees and when they buzz together it’s a louder, collective sound. Emotions are no different. A group of thoughts are buzzing at once. At the root, they are just thoughts. If you learn to drop the thought with mindfulness, whatever be your emotional state, it will pass. Allow it to pass. It is cyclical and it is temporary – that is all you have to remember.

Once upon a time in a certain village lived a prominent trader. He was wealthy, honourable and a man of repute, and yet he was restless and worried. He could not shed his fears, of failure, of losing, of unknown. He approached his spiritual master and pleaded, “With your grace I have everything yet I am always afraid and worried. Please give me wisdom so that I may be peaceful under all circumstances, no matter what.”

“So, you want to be peaceful under all circumstances?” the guru confirmed.

“Yes, your holiness.”

The master grabbed a piece of sacred bhojapatra, the bark of birch tree, dipped his pen in ink made from vermilion and scribbled something on it. He let the charm dry for a few minutes, folded it and gave it to him. “Here, always keep this with you. Open this only when you feel your worst fear has come true.”

The trader prostrated before his master and went back. A terrible drought hit that region two years later and his financial situation went into tatters. He had no stock to sell, debtors were unable to pay their dues and creditors started chasing him for theirs. They dragged him to court, made him sell his house, mortgaged his wife’s jewellery and had his warehouses pawned. He pleaded and he prayed but nothing worked. His master had already left for secluded meditation on forbidden peaks. It was time to read his guru’s inscription, he thought.

He unfolded it to see the contents; it read, “Stay firm, stay course. This will pass.”